The idea of travel brings with it the promise of exotic places filled with interesting people, and images of glittering beaches and crystal clear water, or adventure, relaxation, or even a family holiday. But that’s for those who are able to come and go as they please: one person’s exploration is another’s exploitation. For many, ‘travel’ has been ‘not quite right’ for centuries, bringing conquest and oppression, inequality and ecological disaster, prejudice, and at times walls to keep out ‘the other’.

Honouring ten years of Speaking Volumes, Not Quite Right for Us is a warning shot, an affirmation, an education ...

In forty short stories, poems and essays — by turns wry, gentle, furious, humorous, passionate, analytical and elliptical — these forty writers, new and established, speak volumes, invoking their experiences of outsiderness and their defiance against it.

In this episode we’ll hear … ‘i am no less’ by Michelle Cahill; ‘We Wait’ by Rafeef Ziadah; and Prologue from ‘Abolition’ by Gabriel Gbadamosi (voiced by actors Joe Hughes, Danny Nutt, Owen Oakeshott & Rex Obano). Our guide is actor and author Pauline Melville.

Not Quite Right for Us is a stellar new anthology which explores the many ways we’ve all been made to feel ‘not quite right’ at some time or another.

Recorded in collaboration with Speaking Volumes.
The anthology is available at all good bookshops, or order from Flipped Eye Publishing.
If you enjoyed this episode of NQRFU, try London by Lockdown: a podcast about falling in love with a new city in the middle of a pandemic; remaining curious and open; and about making it work. Available on all podcast platforms or our website.

Information
Music composed by Dominique Le Gendre
Narration by Lucy Hannah
Music & SFX from Epidemic Sound
Image by Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash